Butterfly is the seventh album and fifth studio album by American pop/R&B singer Mariah Carey, released in the United States on 16 September 1997 by Columbia Records. It was Carey’s first album to be released following the ending of her marriage to Sony Music executive Tommy Mottola, and it includes contributions from producers such as The Trackmasters, Puff Daddy, Stevie J and Walter Afanasieff. In a 2006 interview with MTV Overdrive Carey referred to the album as “ahead of its time”, and said she considers “Babydoll”, “Breakdown” and “The Roof” as “still some of my favourites”.

Carey had visualized the title track “Butterfly” as a house record; the legacy of which is in the David Morales produced “Fly Away (Butterfly Reprise)” (based on the Elton John song “Skyline Pigeon”). However, the song evolved instead into a ballad, which she co-wrote with Walter Afanasieff. According to Carey, women who have suffered abuse during childhood or in relationships have told her that “Close My Eyes” saved their lives. She has said the album’s closing track, “Outside”, is “about being multi-racial and feeling like I was from another planet”. She referred to this album in an MTV interview as one of her closest albums, because it was the first to really begin to express her personality.

Reception

Rolling Stone described Butterfly as “a transitional album” for Carey, who placed herself firmly in the “milieu of hip-hop-inflected R&B” and give it three stars, while the All Music Guide gave it four stars, stating that “it is one of her best albums, illustrating that Carey continues to improve and refine her music which makes her a rarity among her ’90s peers”.^[3] Billboard magazine called it “a milestone record for one of the most successful and visible artist of the nineties” while Slant included it in the feature “Vital Pop — 50 Essential Pop Albums” giving it four and a half stars. The 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die referred to Butterfly as “astonishing”, “stunning”, and “an album on which bitterness becomes beauty and glumness becomes gold”.